Why I drink ... phone calls.

I wound up at a JUCO in part because I could have gotten about a 1/4 of a track/cross country scholarship at the D-II schools that were recruiting me. I had books, tuition and part of my dorm paid for running for a JUCO. I also wasn't ready to commit to anything for four year coming out of high school. Maybe I'd run for two years, do awesome and get a bunch of D-I offers. Or maybe I would suck and hate it and not want to run anymore at all. Maybe I'd still have those D-II offers, but decide I'd rather go to the big state school all my friends were going to and focus on journalism.

For me it wound up being No. 3, but I had no idea when I graduated high school.

 

Exactly. I have sworn off covering track at anything short of an Olympics or Olympic Trials for the rest of my life.

 

Coach gives us a roster with misspelled names, but according to the parents, WE have an agenda against their children.

That's a regular one.

 

A track meet can be a fantastic thing to cover if you have an opportunity to focus on the most intriguing person or event. Unfortunately, most people's bosses just want them to list the results and get as many names in the paper as possible.

 

Or misspells their names on the phone.

I dealt with that today. I could tell the dad I was talking to thought I was lying.

"You mean the guy who has coached her for the last three years doesn't know how to spell her name?"

 

To address all of the follow-up comments...

1) The mom was sincerely apologetic and I don't think realized saying that was slightly insulting.

2) I'm not sure how smart the kid is, but he went to a private school that really does put a ton of emphasis on academics, so he's probably not dumb.

3) He might have had some more options but he had wrist surgery in the summer, which hurt his chances and took away some looks until late season. And he threw a no-hitter in the playoffs, if that's any indication of how good he can be.

4) I went to a JUCO for two years, too, but not to play sports. I did it to live at home and be able to spend all my money on beer, guitar strings and girls.

 

I had a baseball coach who had a four-year starter on the high school baseball team whose name was Karelskint.

The coach spelled it Karlskent for four years.

 

I too have had my fair share of awful cold calls – being labeled everything short of a cold-blooded murderer of dreams and hope for a better America.

And not to take away from the well-deserved venting that this thread provides, but one of those calls that seemingly started out that same old way actually turned into something totally different for me several years ago.

It was my first beat job, I was young, I had just started and really didn't know a whole lot outside of the usual basics when it came to background of the beat.

I write a story about something athletic department-related, and a few days later I get a phone call from an older guy who is upset about a particular detail in said story.
The call turns into about a 45-minute lecture session about his entire life and how wrong I was to sell something that happened back in the 1950s short.

The call goes on about how you might guess – and after hanging the phone up with a sweaty ear, I find out that the guy that called was a former university president way back when.

I was polite to him, listened to what he had to say and was lucky enough to field several more of those calls over the years. It got to a point where he would call just to talk – always at the most random time.

I learned more about the historical background of my beat from those calls than I had in any other meeting, interview, research session that I'd gone through.

He was older, wasn't in great health – but he always read my stuff, and always wanted to chat. Sometimes it was ornery, sometimes it wasn't.

That went off and on for about four years. He recently passed away, and though I barely knew him, I felt like I lost a friend.

So that just goes to show you – sometimes, only sometimes, those angry, long-winded, seemingly meaningless phone calls don't turn out so bad.



Now – back to the regularly-scheduled ranting. ...

 

There is going to be a segment of the readership in just about any market -- coaches, parents, alums, etc. -- that value the high school sports above all else. Just their personal preference and they're expressing that.

 

Swim moms. Ugh.

A parent of a swimmer on the league champion team sends in a photo of her daughter's relay team from the sectional meet, asking if I can print it. I'm really short on space this week, so I say no, but explain that I'll get it online. I planned to go to the meet and shoot it, but I had a personal situation that prevented me from getting out to the section meet, so I'm chasing it by phone. I'm a one-man weekly shop covering five schools. It's hell trying to get something in about all schools.

Her reply: No one reads the online version! This is a huge accomplishment for the girls, they worked so hard! This is something for the scrapbooks, you know?

Me: Sorry, but really, I am crammed for space. The girls' accomplishments will be in the story, so they can read that.
Her: Can't you just shrink the other photos on the page?
Me: It doesn't work that way. (I've already laid out the section and I'd have to cut from two other stories to fit this photo)
Her: But they've worked so hard and it would mean so much to them. You guys never cover Hometown High's swim team!
Me: Hometown High's swim team was on the second page of the section last week, with a photo. It was also on the front page of the section the week before, with the main photo.
Her: But it wasn't of my daughter!
Me, flummoxed: No, no it wasn't. The photo will be online, that's all I can do.

She then called back 5 minutes later to ask if we can run just the photo next week. Do these parents realize how bad they sound?

 

I don't care about level at all.

Where's the interest?

How are the crowds?

 

Substantially higher in the college team. The crowds were very small for the high school games, because those teams weren't any good either. My guess is that the three city schools combined failed to outdraw the college team.